The CR+1 Issue

Both Tales of the Valiant and D&D 2024 are balanced at a higher power level than D&D 2014. ToV is balanced at a one-level-higher power level difference, as their monsters hit harder and are more sturdy. Kobold Press has always balanced its monsters on the more challenging side to keep combats exciting, and seeing their game increase the power level of characters to that extent is not surprising.

Many things in D&D 2024 are one or even two levels higher, given what I'm hearing about the overpowered classes. I wonder if D&D 2024 is actually a CR+2 game, at least in the character area. Players of both games are finding earlier adventures easier with either set of rules, especially so on the D&D 2024 side.

More power always sells, and this is the bane of many games and their later expansions. It is rare to find a design team that cares about late-game balance and crafting expansions that don't blow out the base books' content. In D&D's case, they upped the power level of the entire game to sell it as something you should switch to. ToV's design upped the power level, but they also shifted class features to levels where they could be used more, the fun ones appear earlier, and you have a better experience playing the class.

ToV's classes are superior in most areas. They make sense and give me a satisfying feeling when building them. I look forward to leveling. They feel right, given monster power and balance.

Now, in ToV, you can always swap the adventure's modules out with the tougher ones in the Monster Vault. This is what I would do, and likely the balance issues would resolve themselves since ToV monsters offer me more, in abilities and power level, than either D&D game. I could also rebuild the encounter using the ToV tools and balance it myself, but that defeats the ease of use of buying an adventure where the work should be done for you.

This issue has prompted me to store many of my third-party 5E monster books and to pare down my library to the items that work best with ToV. There is no monster shortage in ToV, as we have monster books overfilling the Kobold Press store over there, the game's Monster Vault, and a second Monster Vault shipping this year. There are thousands, all balanced to the higher power level that ToV supports.

Adventures are another story, at least the ones not published by Kobold Press. If an adventure has tons of custom monsters, that will be a less-useful book than one that uses mostly foes from the game's bestiaries. Of course, I can swap in ToV monsters or add a monster or two to the encounters, and that is a better way.

One of the settings I am exploring for ToV is the excellent Lost Lands setting, initially written for Swords & Wizardry but converted to the 5E system. Many of the physical books in this series are out of print, but I have a shelf full, and the PDFs are often your only option. However, I love the old-school vibe and feeling of these adventures. The world is "down & gritty," as an old-school setting should be, and the adventures, maps, locations, and NPCs are generous and of high quality.

Frog God Games consistently delivers "meat on the bones" in these books, and when you need a town map, it is there for you. When an area needs to be created as a sandbox, you get it. When there should be an important NPC with stats, you get them. While there is conversion to ToV, the amount of "quality, good stuff" in these books is very high, and that keeps me from doing all that work and focusing on encounter balance.

Encounter balance is a thing in 5E, isn't it? Most of my prep is encounter balance. It's strange how games like GURPS and Cypher System don't even think of encounter balance. I am a video game designer in 5E all the time, trying to balance "game boards" and "design boss fights."

Mystara and Lost Lands are my two favorite non-Kobold Press settings. Mystara wins on nostalgia and setting flavor, while Lost Lands has the adventures, detailed maps, and towns all laid out for me. Do not sleep on the Frog God Games 5E books! They are some of the best old-school feeling conversions out there, and take a game that can sometimes feel "too 5E" and make it more into an old-school experience.

Tone is everything.

Lost Lands also features one of the best mega-dungeons of all time, Rappan Athuk, which has been converted to 5E. This will have the CR+1 issue, but again, play ToV enough, and you will be easily able to rebalance stock 5E encounters for the ToV power level. This is a mega-dungeon that can sustain years of gaming, not even to clear the entire thing, but used as a campaign setting where characters need to visit from time to time to accomplish specific quests on the various sub-levels.

This is a "place of great evil and power" that will attract various evil factions. You could have a small part cleared by the characters, and they later return to find the entire area taken over by a new group with entirely new plans. Or they could come back and find a cleared area now inhabited by strange spirits and demons that whisper in the darkness and prey upon the unwary.

You can also easily expand this dungeon with your own areas, branch off and make your own caverns and ancient temples, and put your own creative mark on the dangers and mysteries here.

This place is a vast "evil mana battery" that empowers all sorts of wicked, vile, and nefarious factions. There is a reason for this, and that is on the dungeon's deepest levels.

Also, learn to swap monsters for the Kobold Press versions. Doing this will also create a level of surprise and uncertainty in your encounters, and allow you to feature some of the outstanding Kobold Press designs in the various monster books they created for 5E. The Tome of Beasts (and the Creature Codex) series by Kobold Press is very nice since they list creatures by type in the appendices. This way, if you need an undead creature, you can always go to the back of the book and have a list of them in that book.

The cover of Tome of Beasts III looks like a Rappan Athuk monster encounter in the woods outside the insane caves and tunnels beneath the unholy ground. That book is made for a place like this.

Better yet, we are finally away from the overused "product identity" monsters of D&D, which tend to be overused and in sore need of being retired to the Monster Hall of Fame. That thing on the cover? I have never seen or fought that before. A D&D mind flayer or beholder? Again? Nostalgia is a significant toxicity issue in D&D, and those original monsters were designed to be "things we never saw before." These days? They are 50-year-old creatures, overused, and in a mid-life crisis.

New monsters cause the thrill and excitement in the game! Always go for the new ones! Even if you are uncomfortable running them, your players will be thrown for a loop, fighting the unexpected, and constantly on their toes and excited for what is next.

This is how it used to be back in the day.

Nobody knew what to expect.

Make your game just like that.

Another great tool that Kobold Press gives us is the free Monster Search tool on their homepage (link in the sidebar). Here, I conducted a search for CR 3 to 6 undead monsters, which will provide a list of different ones to choose from across their books. This way, I can add the new monsters from the Kobold Press and ToV books to my adventure, so I can change the sometimes "stock 5E" ones in these adventures to something unique and fun from the twisted minds of the Kobolds.

There is also a free encounter builder on the Kobold Press site! Check the sidebar. If I needed to completely rebuild a boss fight, the tool is there for me to use. The software and website support put ToV above any other 5E clone, with no D&D Beyond subscription, and no VTT subscription needed. If they ever release a free character builder with export functionality, that will seal the deal.

Do not forget the monster templates from the ToV Game Master's Guide! If you ever wanted to create a zombie owlbear to terrify your players, this is the way to do it. You don't always have to use unique monsters from the Kobold Press books; the templates let you make a hill giant skeleton, shadow worms, element-infused variants, and many other interesting combinations.

You could see the CR+1 issue as something that makes the game seem like it has less support, but this is an opportunity to change up encounters and put my own spin on these adventures with a bit of care and work. Do you play an adventure, and feel that the monsters are generic and uninteresting? You have the tools to fix that.

Give me the tools, monsters, and a little time to take an adventure to the next level, and I will do that.

ToV and the tools Kobold Press gives you make it easy.